Tara Brach Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

When we see the secret beauty of anyone, including ourselves, we see past our judgment and fear into the core of who we truly are - not an entrapped self but the radiance of goodness.

Tara Brach
Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.

Tara Brach
Even a few moments of offering lovingkindness can reconnect you with the purity of your loving heart.

Tara Brach
When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.

Tara Brach
Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.

Tara Brach
As we free ourselves from the suffering of 'something is wrong with me, 'we trust and express the fullness of who we are.'

Tara Brach
By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

Tara Brach
The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away.

Tara Brach
Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

Tara Brach
Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

Tara Brach
When we relax about imperfection, we no longer lose our life moments in the pursuit of being different and in the fear of what is wrong.

Tara Brach
We are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena. While this isn't easy, as we cultivate the clear seeing and compassion of Radical Acceptance, we discover we can open fully to this natural force, and remain free in its midst.

Tara Brach
Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal... The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life... You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing 'no thing,' and simply notice what you are experiencing.

Tara Brach
Sometimes the easiest way to appreciate ourselves is by looking through the eyes of someone who loves us.

Tara Brach
If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.

Tara Brach
It is through realizing loving presence as our very essence, through being that presence, that we discover true freedom.

Tara Brach
What would it be like if, right in the midst of this busyness, we were to consciously take our hands off the controls? What if we were to intentionally stop our mental computations and our rushing around and, for a minute or two, simply pause and notice our inner experience?

Tara Brach
But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.

Tara Brach
On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

Tara Brach
You have a unique body and mind, with a particular history and conditioning. No one can offer you a formula for navigating all situations and all states of mind. Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom.

Tara Brach
Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

Tara Brach
We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.

Tara Brach
When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.

Tara Brach
The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.

Tara Brach
Fear of being a flawed person lay at the root of my trance, and I had sacrificed many moments over the years in trying to prove my worth. Like the tiger Mohini, I inhabited a self-made prison that stopped me from living fully.

Tara Brach
The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.

Tara Brach
As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own.... There was no sense of a self owning them.

Tara Brach
Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There's less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what's happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.

Tara Brach
The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

Tara Brach
The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.

Tara Brach